Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Newborn infant with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and generalized skin eruptions.” (J Dermatol. 2006 Sep;33(9):628-31). Authors are Bay A, Calka O, Akdeniz N et al., from the Faculty of Medicine, Yuzuncu Yil University, Van, Turkey. Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a rare disease resulting from abnormal proliferation of histiocytes in tissues and organs. The incidence of HLH is 1:50 000-300 000. Cutaneous eruptions have been reported in 6-65% of the cases. The authors present an infant with prominent skin manifestations of HLH. On the 11th day of life, she was admitted to the hospital with complaint of a generalized rash that had started the previous day. The eruptions consisted of irregularly shaped maculopapular erythematous rash and purpura. Bone marrow aspiration on the 25th day of life revealed hemophagocytosis with increased macrophages and histiocytes, consistent with HLH. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.